1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and a control method, and particularly relates to an image forming apparatus capable of feeding paper contained in a cassette and a control method for the image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some of the image forming apparatuses having the printing capability such as MFP (Multi-Functional Peripheral) are each mounted with a case (cassette) for holding paper to be used for printing and/or a tray (manual feed tray) for placement of externally-fed paper thereon. On the manual feed tray, a sheet of paper that a user wants to use for printing can be placed.
In the case where an image forming apparatus is used to print document data on paper, it is necessary to specify the size of the paper to be used for printing.
As for size setting, the paper size can be set for example on a setting screen of an operation panel. For example, on the cassette-by-cassette basis of the MFP or each time a sheet of paper is placed on the manual feed tray, a paper size can be selected from paper sizes displayed on the setting screen to thereby set each paper size.
The operation for the above-described setting, however, is complicated. Moreover, such an operation is difficult for a user if the user is not familiar with the paper size, which may result in that the user is in error in setting the paper size.
Accordingly, several methods for automatically setting the size have been proposed. As one of these methods, a method has been proposed according to which the paper size is detected by means of a sensor and the paper size is set to the detected size. For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. 10-326064 and 11-157700 each disclose a technique according to which a scanner, an automatic document feeder, or a manual paper feed mechanism is used as a sensor to detect the paper size and the paper size for a paper feed tray is automatically set to the detected size.
A user can place a sheet of paper of any size on the manual feed tray. The user therefore has to set the paper size each time the user places a sheet of paper on the manual feed tray. Thus, even if using the automatic setting as disclosed in the above-referenced documents, the user still has to perform an operation for setting the paper size that is different from an operation for printing, before performing the operation for printing. A resultant problem has therefore been that the operation for printing on a sheet of paper on the manual feed tray is complicated.